Effect of Median Frequency Levels upon the Roughness of Jittered Stimuli

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between median frequency levels and roughness perception for jittered stimuli. Five median frequency levels were combined with four jitter excursions to form stimuli which were submitted to 32 listeners, who judged roughness by paired comparisons, rating scale, and magnitude estimation techniques. The results showed the same trends in each of the procedures. Stimuli of lower median frequency were judged to be rougher than those of higher median frequency, for all jitter conditions. The conclusion is that the median frequency levels of jittered wavetrains do affect the perception of roughness in analog stimuli. Whether the same relationship holds for human rough voices must be experimentally verified.